Furious Departure

Awful, wrong diagnosis, rude reaction, huge price and unsolved problem...

Unfortunately we had a seriously disappointing experience; credit to them they accepted our car before their registered opening time. They then phoned us and quoted (somewhat expensively) to replace the ignition coil kit, as “the engine diagnostics recommended it” and if we gave the go ahead, the car would be ready at 13:00! They ended up with the wrong part and postponed the completion time to 16:00. In the meantime we went to the Buitengracht branch to find that they had moved the car to their loop street premises WITHOUT even a courtesy call to let us know our pick up location was different. Once the correct part was fitted the misfiring persisted and ONLY THEN did they do a compression test and found there was no compression on cylinder 3 and they would have to pull the engine apart for a very pretty penny. Fair enough this is a simple mistake however, when we dropped it off we mentioned “we think there is a problem with cylinder 3”. When we confronted them asking why was a simple compression test not carried out during the diagnosis? A common first step for misfiring. Instead of admitting that they had made a mistake and wasted a whole days worth of car fixing time, it turned into a massive argument where both parties behaved terribly, there was shouting, swearing, accusations, insults about our family members who are “obviously not mechanically minded”, threats to confiscate our keys and close the doors until we paid. All of the sudden the quote was halved, but we argued that even that was excessive, how can they make us pay if we are leaving with the same problem we arrived with.

Finally we agreed to pay for the new parts, as well as a reasonable amount of labor time, because let’s be honest, you have to be pretty *********** if it takes half a day to run diagnostics and change an ignition coil pack and its cords. We were not innocent, but I do feel it was extremely unprofessional to try take advantage of the fact that they know more about cars and then try turn it into the customers fault. We trust Mechanics to solve the problems we can’t and pay them for their honest work. Every car owner on the planet despises an opportunist’s dishonest invoicing.